This was a FUN chapter! There are so many fish in creation that we can't possibly study even a fraction of them all! Apologia covers them well by breaking down different fish by the most common characteristics.

The first week we really broke the notes down by talking about the 3 main kinds of fish.

Bony Fishes

Cartilaginous Fishes

Jawless Fishes

This helped the kids categorize some of the fish they have already learned. We also ended by briefly talking about buoyancy and the amazing swim bladder that God has placed in most fishes! So incredible!

We did the week 10 note page and then the kids completed their folder activity. They cut out the labels and glued them onto the fish diagram.

The last thing we did was complete the Ectothermic fish experiment. I was a super focused teacher and totally forgot to take pictures of this! It was pretty neat though. Here is what we did:

We purchased 2 goldfish (we bought our at the local fish store for .25 cents per fish

We collected 2 small fish bowls

A desk lamp

A large bowl filled with ice

Place one of the fish bowls into the large bowl of ice and then place the other one directly under the desk lamp. We discussed how fish are ectothermic meaning that the body temperature of a fish changes with the changing temperature of the water.

​This temperature change does have some effects on the fish and how it behaved or moved in the water based on if the temperature was warm vs. cold.

​ (you can find this experiment in the Apologia textbook on page 101-102).

We used the following printout to help kids write down there original hypothesis and results throughout the experiment. The kids placed this into their "Fish" Tab in their research notebooks.

The 2nd week we completed our notebooking page and then moved on to our folder activity. We really focused on the fishes defense mechanisms and shapes. The kids were able to construct a wheel for their folder activity on the most common fish shapes and then we moved to our experiment.

We ended our chapter on Fish by doing a Buoyancy Experiment.

Here are the items we collected:

Rock

Domino

Grape

Apple

Potato

Paper clip

Eraser

Spoon

Fork

After the kids filled out their hypothesis about each item on their paper, they each took a turn testing out their guess to see if the item sank or if it would float.

The idea of buoyancy can be confusing so before doing this experiment, we talked about how God designed Fishes to be denser than water. Density tells us how tightly packed the matter in an object is. So if it is very dense, it has a lot packed tightly into it so it would be "heavier" than an object with less matter packed into it.

​If the item is denser than water, it would sink.

The kids realized after hearing this that if fishes are denser than water, they would sink! God gave the fishes a specially designed "Swim Bladder" to help them with this. AMAZING!

This chapter came to an end right before our Christmas Break. The following week's class was a fun ending to the semester. The kids made a super cool fish ornament and then we watch an amazing video of sea creatures.

Stay tuned to see the post on how to make this ornament and also to check out the video we used in our class.

I'll end by sharing the last page we used. The kids who finished up early were given a chance to "design their own fish" and then share it with the class. There are SO many different fish and I can only imagine how amazing and fun it was for God to design and create all the fish in the ocean...even the ones we have never seen or have yet to be discovered!

I am back again and I was wondering if I could get a copy of your Common Fish shapes wheel. I can not remember where you got the wheel for the turtle that I got from you before but you obviously have put a lot of time and effort into your lesson plans. Great job!

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